Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)

by Brandon Sanderson

“She will make the right choice,” Jaxlim said to Resolve. “How do you know?” Thude asked. “Because it’s her choice to make,” Venli said, grasping what her mother meant. “And so her choice is the right one. We will respect it.”

Jormo came in swinging, trusting in his greater weight and momentum. Szeth refused to be caught in the momentum of life, or of battle. Momentum carried those who didn’t wonder, didn’t stop to question.

“Why do you push yourself so hard, Szeth?” she asked. “I am here,” he said. She looked confused by that answer. He wasn’t certain why—he was here, so he would do as the place demanded. Yes, he missed dancing. Yes, he missed the sheep, and the grass, and the solitude. But he was here, not there.

Dalinar would speak of kingdom, king, and ideals—not play the charismatic commander. He’d tell the soldiers to fight for something, not someone. Because if the someone fell, Adolin’s way could lead to chaos, while a nation or ideal could outlast any one man’s death. It was good, reasonable leadership advice. It ignored the fact that none of these soldiers really fought for their country or their ideals. Not in the moment. It might have been why they signed up; maybe it was why they said they fought. But in the sweat and blood and chaos and storm of the battle, they fought for none of that. They fought for one another.

We are what Adonalsium left … the Wind said. And even the storm, before Honor, could be pled with at times …

“The Stormfather never told me that,” Dalinar said. “The Stormfather says the storm simply is. That it has no choice but to destroy.” This is Roshar. Nothing merely is. Everything thinks. Everything has a choice. Watch. As humans choose.

“Nale,” Tanavast said. “It is good to see you. Tell the others. Did I lie to you last time?” “No,” Nale said. “But the powers you gave me … they helped burn the world itself.” Honor’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. But did I warn you?” “Yes,” Nale admitted. “You did.”

“We’re a lot alike, you know,” Kaladin said. “We are?” “Left our homes as youths to become soldiers,” Kaladin said. “Ended up fighting battles we didn’t believe in, because of our foolish choices. I see myself in you, Szeth.” “I cannot say the same,” Szeth replied. “I do my job. You always seem to be questioning yours. I find that aspect of you embarrassing.”

“Rule number one,” Kaladin called after him. “You’re not a thing. You’re a person. Rule number two, you get to choose. And there’s a third rule, Szeth. You deserve to be happy.”

“The Radiant bond is a symbiosis,” May said. “Which means the bond gives something to both parties. Like … a contract. The human gets access to the Surges that are an innate aspect of the spren. In return, the spren gets stability in this realm. A human mind and soul to anchor them to the physical world, without which spren have trouble thinking and functioning.”

There were two on this planet who, even as a divinity, he respected almost as equals. Jasnah Kholin and Dalinar Kholin. If they opposed him, then … he questioned.

“You come to a temple to think?” “It’s quiet. And beautiful.” “Even after all these years,” he said, “I do not always understand the person you are, Jasnah. Shouldn’t this place make you angry? You deny the divinity at the very foundation of its religion. You deny the faith of the people who built it.” “Small quibble,” she said, “but I do not deny that the people who built this had faith. Nor do I deny that faith’s power to inspire.”

“But you are in opposition to their god.” “A larger quibble,” she said. “I’m not in opposition to their god, because their god—as they imagine him, all-powerful and all-knowing—does not exist. I can no more be in opposition to that than I am to an imaginary childhood friend—you cannot wrestle with, fight, or oppose something that does not exist. I oppose the assumptions that people make. Because if you start with faulty assumptions…”

I realize this is, in a way, ridiculous. I, who proclaim a god to be dead, am also the one who rejects the idea that no God exists. And yet my very being—soul, mind, body—rebels at the idea that nothing out there cares. It must.

Syl bolted upright, then grabbed Kaladin by the arm. Actually grabbed him. With full force. He glanced at her, shocked. “Kaladin,” Syl hissed. “One of those acolytes is going to try to kill Szeth.” He blinked, took it in. And trusted her. Without a moment’s hesitation, Kaladin summoned the spear.

“Fine, you’re right. As usual.” “Don’t say it that way.” “Because?” “Because I want to be right only when I’m right, not because it’s expected. That’s part of my journey, Kaladin.”

“Shallan, it is my job to help and protect you. I do a bad job sometimes! But today, let me promise: in you, I have found someone sincere. That is what attracted me—your sincerity and your lies, combining to create a more important truth.

Jasnah says that the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God must be questioned by the simple evidence of injustices done in life to the innocent, such as the child who dies from disease. —From the epilogue to Oathbringer, by Dalinar Kholin

He’d found it strange—or perhaps oddly encouraging—that here, fighters weren’t dismissed as “those who subtract.” Merely “those who touch stone.” It was the wrong way of things, but sometimes the wrong way could … sound better.

Adolin Kholin had been protecting the weak since he could walk. Strange, that Renarin was now the knight.

Dalinar met her eyes and nodded. He had the Connection, the pathway. An anchor forged of their own natures, history, and bonds. “I am in awe, Navani. I didn’t realize your scholarly methods could help us understand the ways of the gods.” “Dalinar,” she said, “understanding the ways of God is the primary purpose of science.”

“The thing is, the deepest truths always sound a little trite. Because we all know them, and feel foolish being reminded.”

“The Fused Returned because Taln broke,” Nin said. “The Everstorm was brought in, along with gemstones bearing spren, in order to quicken the process of rebirth—and to make it easier to give forms of power. We do not know what would have happened if Taln had not broken before the Everstorm arrived. Ishar explained this to me.” “So you don’t know,” Syl said, pointing. “You don’t know that re-forming the Oathpact will actually achieve anything. The Everstorm, the methods of physically bringing Voidspren through Shadesmar, might make it meaningless.”

First, this Voice had stolen the grasslands from him, then it had stolen his innocence, then finally it had ascended him to master of wind and Truth.

We worried it would break you, he said. I think the Spiritual Realm itself wants to show you things that hurt. “It never broke me,” Shallan said. “It merely cracked me, Pattern. I filled those cracks.”

Szeth didn’t know the mechanics, but it had been shared with him as he reached higher levels of training. A highspren could end their bond at any point, with no repercussions to either of them. No deadeyed highspren existed, or would exist. If Szeth walked away from his oaths, his spren would not be hurt. The way they did this involved a distance between them, which protected the highspren from the human. And that distance was part of why their attitude toward their Radiants was so different as well.

“Why do I need to keep learning the same lessons? Can’t I make progress for once?” “You aren’t relearning the same lessons,” Pattern said. “You’re reinforcing them. In math, you can know a thing, yes, but it is the proof that teaches the deeper truth. Life is your proof, Shallan.”

By tradition, he entered right as she did, from his own meditation room. He wore a brand-new side sword, because of course he did. He’d later tell her it was a gift from Kaladin. He’d been given forty-seven different swords that day, including one from her, and had chosen to wear Kaladin’s.

Shallan had given that moment to Veil. Now, she could finally see, accept, and acknowledge it. Her mother stood at the back of the room, among the servants. The Herald had died, and returned. Shallan had killed her and sent her to Braize, where she had broken and come back to Roshar. Initiating the Return, unleashing the Voidbringers, and starting all of this.

What does the power of oaths care for lives, Dalinar?

“Ah, Dalinar,” the voice said. “Listen. Remember. The question is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path.”

You kept the pain, Dalinar. Remember that. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method…”

“Rysn,” Nikli said, stepping between her and the strange man, “do not speak with this one. He isn’t what you think. He walked away from his duty centuries ago. He held a Dawnshard once, but now merely bears echoes of it—”

The Sleepless had explained to her what she held: a Dawnshard, one of the four core forces by which a god had been Shattered. Something beyond common Surges. Something primal.

The visions themselves were hiding Dalinar now? They’d all been playing with the fragments of Honor’s power in here, as it longed to have a Vessel again, and thus was easy to mold into the shapes of memories. Visions, for that reason, were more stable when in this “region” of the Spiritual Realm.

THERE WERE ECHOES, OF COURSE, OF MY PREDECESSOR. LITTLE BITS OF HIM LEFT BEHIND. THREE POWERFUL INCARNATIONS WHO HAD HIS VOICE, AND MANY SMALLER ONES REPRESENTING ASPECTS OF NATURE AND PERSONALITY. BEYOND THESE TINY SPIRITS, ROSHAR HAD PEOPLE. A CURIOUS VARIETY WHO COULD HEAR THE SONGS OF THE GODS. THEIR ORDERLINESS SANG TO MY SOUL, AND TO THE POWER I NOW HELD.

THE ONE I’D ALWAYS LOVED IN SECRET—OUR UNION FORBIDDEN AS MORTALS—EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS OF THE VOID BETWEEN WORLDS. CULTIVATION, SHE WAS NOW CALLED, THOUGH I KNEW HER AS KORAVELLIUM AVAST—THE BEAUTIFUL DRAGON HERETIC OF YOLEN.

I WAS IN COMMAND, NOT IT. I COULD DECIDE WHAT PROMISE WAS WORTH KEEPING, AND WHAT WAS WORTH DISCARDING.

“I LEFT MY PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY WANTED ME TO TAKE PRAYERS,” SHE SAID. “I CAN HOLD THIS POWER, BECAUSE SOMEONE MUST. BUT I HAVE NO DESIRE TO BE WORSHIPPED, TANAVAST. LET US FIND ANOTHER WORLD WHERE WE CAN EXPERIMENT WITH CREATIONS THAT WILL BE PART OF US, NOT REMNANTS OF THE BEING WE … WE BETRAYED.”

“IT … IS A BEAUTIFUL SONG,” SHE SAID. “THE SONG THE NIGHT SINGS … I LOVE IT.” I SMILED. SHE SMILED BACK, A GLOW LIKE THE SUNRISE. AND SO IT WAS. UNTIL RAYSE ARRIVED.

“Did you tell Elhokar,” he demanded, his eyes seething, “that he shouldn’t marry Aesudan?” “So I was right,” she said. “It’s that argument.” “How dare you? We need this union; you know how I’ve worked for it. Elhokar would have married that nobody scribe, if not for me.”

Fear the old man who welcomed failure when young. If he has survived this long, he learned.

I HAD SHOWN MYSELF TO THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND, AND TAUGHT THEM TO SING TO THE STONES—WITH THE SONGS, AND MY POWER, THEY LEARNED TO SCULPT IT. THEY NAMED THEMSELVES THE SINGERS, BECAUSE THEY COULD USE THE SONGS OF GODS. THEY RESPECTED ME. AND I LOVED THEM.

RAYSE’S FAVORED PEOPLE HAD BEEN IMBUED WITH POWER, FAR GREATER THAN THE POWER OF SCULPTING STONE I HAD GIVEN THE SINGERS. THIS WAS A DREADFUL POWER, CONTROL OVER THE VERY SURGES THAT MAKE UP CREATION.

I can hear them, I think, Navani said. Tones that vibrate the wrong way, like an instrument out of tune. Those are the possible futures, the Sibling said. Discordant until they become reality, and then snap, they match the tones of Roshar.

This long covered walkway led to a built-up location beside the palace. Kholinar’s Oathgate. “Navani?” Elhokar’s voice called after her. “Mother? Mother, help me!” Her blood turned cold as she heard Odium shifting his tone to mimic Elhokar’s. Pleading for help amid the screaming and fighting soldiers. Life before death. Gav was alive. Behind her was only death. She reached the Oathgate. Below, she knew the city was flooding with singers. This city was lost long ago. This is a vision. “Activate it,” she hissed at the simulacrum of Kaladin beside her. He hadn’t frozen in battle this time, as he’d followed her instead of staying to fight. “But…” “Do it!” she snapped. “Mother?” Elhokar’s voice. “Elhokar’s coming,” Kaladin said. “Navani, he’s limping across the Sunwalk. He’s wounded!” “Activate the Oathgate,” she said. “But…” “You aren’t real,” she whispered to Kaladin, refusing to turn toward Elhokar. “He isn’t real. But we are. Please. Help us. If there is anything of the real Stormblessed inside of you, summon it. Please.” The simulacrum looked to her, and something did seem to steel inside him. He ran for the Oathgate’s control building.

The Oathgate flashed. In that moment, she sought the tones of Roshar again, and she felt something latch onto her. I have you, the Sibling said. Connect to me. She held on. Tight. She’d always been good at holding to things she loved. Only recently had she begun to acknowledge when she needed to let go.

“WHAT WAS IN THE TOWER?” Kaladin bellowed. “NOTHING!” Nale yelled back, his face a mask of pain, tears streaming down his cheeks. “There was nothing in the tower! There was…” Nale fell to his knees. “There was nothing! He’s dead.” Nale dropped his Blade. He looked at his hands, then at Kaladin as the music drifted away, the tide becoming a stream. “Honor is … is dead,” Nale whispered. “Jezrien is … is gone. Ishar is … as good … as good as dead too…”

“Derethil learned a lesson that day—one I’ve learned, and you must learn. Even if an emperor makes the laws, when we uphold them, the laws become ours. The responsibility ours. And every action those people took … that blood was on their hands.”

“TANAVAST,” SHE HISSED, “RAYSE DIDN’T KILL ONLY ULI DA.” “WHO ELSE?” “AONA.” THE HEALER? OF ALL PEOPLE, HE’D ATTACKED AONA? “BOTH SHE AND SKAI ARE DEAD, TANAVAST,” KOR WHISPERED. “HE DREW THEM INTO CONFLICT WITH ONE ANOTHER, THEN FINISHED THEM OFF WHEN THEY WERE WEAK.”